The Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass

From the Publisher

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. This book he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist writing in greater detail about his life. It is the only autobiography in which he discusses his life during and after the Civil War, including encounters with American Presidents Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.

In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he Wrote Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass. His other autobiographical works are My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.

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The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Table of Contents Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Introduction [to the 1892 Edition]3Part 11Author's Birth112Removal from Grandmother's133Troubles of Childhood164A General Survey of the Slave Plantation185A Slaveholder's Character256A Child's Reasoning287Luxuries at the Great House348Characteristics of Overseers399Change of Location4310Learning to Read4711Growing in Knowledge5012Religious Nature Awakened5613The Vicissitudes of Slave Life6014Experience in St. Michaels6615Covey, the Negro Breaker7516Another Pressure of the Tyrant's Vise8417The Last Flogging9018New Relations and Duties9819The Runaway Plot10520Apprenticeship Life12221Escape from Slavery130Part 21Escape from Slavery1372Life as a Freeman1413Introduced to the Abolitionists1514Recollections of Old Friends1545One Hundred Conventions1596Impressions Abroad1647Triumphs and Trials1848John Brown and Mrs. Stowe1939Increasing Demands of the Slave Power20910The Beginning of the End22511Secession and War24012Hope for the Nation25313Vast Changes27014Living and Learning29015Weighed in the Balance29616"Time Makes All Things Even"32017Incidents and Events33018"Honor to Whom Honor"34019Retrospection346Appendix351Part 31Later Life3752A Grand Occasion3793Doubts as to Garfield's Course3834Recorder of Deeds3865President Cleveland's Administration3906The Supreme Court Decision3957Defeat of James G. Blaine4058European Tour4079Continuation of European Tour41110The Campaign of 188843411Administration of President Harrison43712Minister to Haiti43913Continued Negotiations for the Mole St. Nicolas446Annotated Bibliography455Index458

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III. TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD. Col. Lloyd's plantation—Aunt Katy—Her cruelty and ill-nature—Capt. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy—Allowance of food—Hunger—Unexpected rescue by his mother—The reproof of Aunt Katy—Sleep—A slave - mother's love—His inheritance—His mother's acquirements—Her death. ONCE established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd—I was with the children there, left to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave woman who was to my master, what he was to Col. Lloyd. Disposing of us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious of old master's favour, ill-tempered and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious. She was therefore greatly favoured by him—and as one mark of his favour she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her brutality. Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children, she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to satisfy their demands for food, she was often guilty of starving me and the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of food to each slave, committed the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to be divided byher, after cooking, amongst us. The allowance consisted of coarse corn meal, not very abundant, and which by passing through Aunt Katy's hands, became more slender s...

Biography

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland, in February 1818. He became a leading abolitionist and women's rights advocate and one of the most influential public speakers and writers of the nineteenth century.

Frederick's mother, Harriet Bailey, was a slave; his father was rumored to be Aaron Anthony, manager for the large Lloyd plantation in St. Michaels, Maryland, and his mother's master. Frederick lived away from the plantation with his grandparents, Isaac and Betsey Bailey, until he was six years old, when he was sent to work for Anthony.

When Frederick was eight, he was sent to Baltimore as a houseboy for Hugh Auld, a shipbuilder related to the Anthony family through marriage. Auld's wife, Sophia, began teaching Frederick to read, but Auld, who believed that a literate slave was a dangerous slave, stopped the lessons. From that point on, Frederick viewed education and knowledge as a path to freedom. He continued teaching himself to read; in 1831 he bought a copy of The Columbian Orator, an anthology of great speeches, which he studied closely.

In 1833 Frederick was sent from Auld's relatively peaceful home back to St. Michaels to work in the fields. He was soon hired out to Edward Covey, a notorious "slave-breaker" who beat him brutally in an effort to crush his will. However, on an August afternoon in 1934, Frederick stood up to Covey and beat him in a fight. This was a turning point, Douglass has said, in his life as a slave; the experience reawakened his desire and drive for liberty.

In 1838 Frederick Bailey escaped from slavery by using the papers of a free seaman. He traveled north to New York City, where Anna Murray soon joined him. Later that year, Frederick and Anna married and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Though settled in the North, Frederick was a fugitive, technically still Auld's property. To protect himself, he became Frederick Douglass, a name inspired by a character in Sir Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake.

Douglass began speaking against slavery at abolitionist meetings and soon gained a reputation as a brilliant orator. In 1841 he began working full-time as an abolitionist lecturer, touring with one of the leading activists of the day, William Lloyd Garrison.

Douglass published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. The book became an immediate sensation and was widely read both in America and abroad. Its publication, however, jeopardized his freedom by exposing his true identity. To avoid capture as a fugitive slave, Douglass spent the next several years touring and speaking in England and Ireland. In 1846, two friends purchased his freedom. Douglass returned to America, an internationally renowned abolitionist and orator.

Douglass addressed the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. This began his long association with the women's rights movement, including friendships with such well-known suffragists as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

During the mid-1840s Douglass began to break ideologically from William Lloyd Garrison. Whereas Garrison's abolitionist sentiments were based in moral exhortation, Douglass was coming to believe that change would occur through political means. He became increasingly involved in antislavery politics with the Liberty and Free-Soil Parties. In 1847 Douglass established and edited the politically oriented, antislavery newspaper the North Star.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln called upon Douglass to advise him on emancipation issues. In addition, Douglass worked hard to secure the rights of blacks to enlist; when the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers was established as the first black regiment, he traveled throughout the North recruiting volunteers. Mo< Douglass's governmental involvement extended far beyond Lincoln's tenure. He was consulted by the next five presidents and served as secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission (1871), marshal of the District of Columbia (1877-1881), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881-1886), and minister to Haiti (1889-1891). A year before his death Douglass delivered an important speech, "The Lessons of the Hour," a denunciation of lynchings in the United States.

On February 20, 1896, Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack. His death triggered an outpouring of grief and mourning; black schools in Washington, D.C. closed for a day, and thousands of children were taken to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church to view his open casket. In his third autobiography, Douglass succinctly and aptly summarized his life; writing that he had "lived several lives in one: first, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life of conflict and battle; and fifthly, the life of victory, if not complete, at least assured."

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

Good To Know

Douglass's mother Harriet referred to Frederick as her "little Valentine," so he unofficially adopted February 14th as his birthday.

Features -

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Table of Contents Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Introduction [to the 1892 Edition]3Part 11Author's Birth112Removal from Grandmother's133Troubles of Childhood164A General Survey of the Slave Plantation185A Slaveholder's Character256A Child's Reasoning287Luxuries at the Great House348Characteristics of Overseers399Change of Location4310Learning to Read4711Growing in Knowledge5012Religious Nature Awakened5613The Vicissitudes of Slave Life6014Experience in St. Michaels6615Covey, the Negro Breaker7516Another Pressure of the Tyrant's Vise8417The Last Flogging9018New Relations and Duties9819The Runaway Plot10520Apprenticeship Life12221Escape from Slavery130Part 21Escape from Slavery1372Life as a Freeman1413Introduced to the Abolitionists1514Recollections of Old Friends1545One Hundred Conventions1596Impressions Abroad1647Triumphs and Trials1848John Brown and Mrs. Stowe1939Increasing Demands of the Slave Power20910The Beginning of the End22511Secession and War24012Hope for the Nation25313Vast Changes27014Living and Learning29015Weighed in the Balance29616"Time Makes All Things Even"32017Incidents and Events33018"Honor to Whom Honor"34019Retrospection346Appendix351Part 31Later Life3752A Grand Occasion3793Doubts as to Garfield's Course3834Recorder of Deeds3865President Cleveland's Administration3906The Supreme Court Decision3957Defeat of James G. Blaine4058European Tour4079Continuation of European Tour41110The Campaign of 188843411Administration of President Harrison43712Minister to Haiti43913Continued Negotiations for the Mole St. Nicolas446Annotated Bibliography455Index458

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III. TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD. Col. Lloyd's plantation—Aunt Katy—Her cruelty and ill-nature—Capt. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy—Allowance of food—Hunger—Unexpected rescue by his mother—The reproof of Aunt Katy—Sleep—A slave - mother's love—His inheritance—His mother's acquirements—Her death. ONCE established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd—I was with the children there, left to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave woman who was to my master, what he was to Col. Lloyd. Disposing of us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious of old master's favour, ill-tempered and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious. She was therefore greatly favoured by him—and as one mark of his favour she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her brutality. Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children, she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to satisfy their demands for food, she was often guilty of starving me and the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of food to each slave, committed the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to be divided byher, after cooking, amongst us. The allowance consisted of coarse corn meal, not very abundant, and which by passing through Aunt Katy's hands, became more slender s...

Editorial Reviews -

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

From the Publisher

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. This book he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist writing in greater detail about his life. It is the only autobiography in which he discusses his life during and after the Civil War, including encounters with American Presidents Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.

In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he Wrote Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass. His other autobiographical works are My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.

From the Publisher

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. It is also the only of Douglass' autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American Presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield

Meet the Writer -

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Fact File

Name: Frederick Douglass

Also Known As: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (birth name)

Current Home: Tuckahoe, Maryland

Date of Death: February 20, 1895

Place of Death: Washington, D.C.

Biography

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland, in February 1818. He became a leading abolitionist and women's rights advocate and one of the most influential public speakers and writers of the nineteenth century.

Frederick's mother, Harriet Bailey, was a slave; his father was rumored to be Aaron Anthony, manager for the large Lloyd plantation in St. Michaels, Maryland, and his mother's master. Frederick lived away from the plantation with his grandparents, Isaac and Betsey Bailey, until he was six years old, when he was sent to work for Anthony.

When Frederick was eight, he was sent to Baltimore as a houseboy for Hugh Auld, a shipbuilder related to the Anthony family through marriage. Auld's wife, Sophia, began teaching Frederick to read, but Auld, who believed that a literate slave was a dangerous slave, stopped the lessons. From that point on, Frederick viewed education and knowledge as a path to freedom. He continued teaching himself to read; in 1831 he bought a copy of The Columbian Orator, an anthology of great speeches, which he studied closely.

In 1833 Frederick was sent from Auld's relatively peaceful home back to St. Michaels to work in the fields. He was soon hired out to Edward Covey, a notorious "slave-breaker" who beat him brutally in an effort to crush his will. However, on an August afternoon in 1934, Frederick stood up to Covey and beat him in a fight. This was a turning point, Douglass has said, in his life as a slave; the experience reawakened his desire and drive for liberty.

In 1838 Frederick Bailey escaped from slavery by using the papers of a free seaman. He traveled north to New York City, where Anna Murray soon joined him. Later that year, Frederick and Anna married and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Though settled in the North, Frederick was a fugitive, technically still Auld's property. To protect himself, he became Frederick Douglass, a name inspired by a character in Sir Walter Scott's poem Lady of the Lake.

Douglass began speaking against slavery at abolitionist meetings and soon gained a reputation as a brilliant orator. In 1841 he began working full-time as an abolitionist lecturer, touring with one of the leading activists of the day, William Lloyd Garrison.

Douglass published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. The book became an immediate sensation and was widely read both in America and abroad. Its publication, however, jeopardized his freedom by exposing his true identity. To avoid capture as a fugitive slave, Douglass spent the next several years touring and speaking in England and Ireland. In 1846, two friends purchased his freedom. Douglass returned to America, an internationally renowned abolitionist and orator.

Douglass addressed the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. This began his long association with the women's rights movement, including friendships with such well-known suffragists as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

During the mid-1840s Douglass began to break ideologically from William Lloyd Garrison. Whereas Garrison's abolitionist sentiments were based in moral exhortation, Douglass was coming to believe that change would occur through political means. He became increasingly involved in antislavery politics with the Liberty and Free-Soil Parties. In 1847 Douglass established and edited the politically oriented, antislavery newspaper the North Star.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln called upon Douglass to advise him on emancipation issues. In addition, Douglass worked hard to secure the rights of blacks to enlist; when the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers was established as the first black regiment, he traveled throughout the North recruiting volunteers. Mo< Douglass's governmental involvement extended far beyond Lincoln's tenure. He was consulted by the next five presidents and served as secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission (1871), marshal of the District of Columbia (1877-1881), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881-1886), and minister to Haiti (1889-1891). A year before his death Douglass delivered an important speech, "The Lessons of the Hour," a denunciation of lynchings in the United States.

On February 20, 1896, Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack. His death triggered an outpouring of grief and mourning; black schools in Washington, D.C. closed for a day, and thousands of children were taken to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church to view his open casket. In his third autobiography, Douglass succinctly and aptly summarized his life; writing that he had "lived several lives in one: first, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life of conflict and battle; and fifthly, the life of victory, if not complete, at least assured."

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

Good To Know

Douglass's mother Harriet referred to Frederick as her "little Valentine," so he unofficially adopted February 14th as his birthday.

Features -

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Table of Contents Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Introduction [to the 1892 Edition]3Part 11Author's Birth112Removal from Grandmother's133Troubles of Childhood164A General Survey of the Slave Plantation185A Slaveholder's Character256A Child's Reasoning287Luxuries at the Great House348Characteristics of Overseers399Change of Location4310Learning to Read4711Growing in Knowledge5012Religious Nature Awakened5613The Vicissitudes of Slave Life6014Experience in St. Michaels6615Covey, the Negro Breaker7516Another Pressure of the Tyrant's Vise8417The Last Flogging9018New Relations and Duties9819The Runaway Plot10520Apprenticeship Life12221Escape from Slavery130Part 21Escape from Slavery1372Life as a Freeman1413Introduced to the Abolitionists1514Recollections of Old Friends1545One Hundred Conventions1596Impressions Abroad1647Triumphs and Trials1848John Brown and Mrs. Stowe1939Increasing Demands of the Slave Power20910The Beginning of the End22511Secession and War24012Hope for the Nation25313Vast Changes27014Living and Learning29015Weighed in the Balance29616"Time Makes All Things Even"32017Incidents and Events33018"Honor to Whom Honor"34019Retrospection346Appendix351Part 31Later Life3752A Grand Occasion3793Doubts as to Garfield's Course3834Recorder of Deeds3865President Cleveland's Administration3906The Supreme Court Decision3957Defeat of James G. Blaine4058European Tour4079Continuation of European Tour41110The Campaign of 188843411Administration of President Harrison43712Minister to Haiti43913Continued Negotiations for the Mole St. Nicolas446Annotated Bibliography455Index458

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III. TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD. Col. Lloyd's plantation—Aunt Katy—Her cruelty and ill-nature—Capt. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy—Allowance of food—Hunger—Unexpected rescue by his mother—The reproof of Aunt Katy—Sleep—A slave - mother's love—His inheritance—His mother's acquirements—Her death. ONCE established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd—I was with the children there, left to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave woman who was to my master, what he was to Col. Lloyd. Disposing of us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious of old master's favour, ill-tempered and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious. She was therefore greatly favoured by him—and as one mark of his favour she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her brutality. Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children, she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to satisfy their demands for food, she was often guilty of starving me and the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of food to each slave, committed the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to be divided byher, after cooking, amongst us. The allowance consisted of coarse corn meal, not very abundant, and which by passing through Aunt Katy's hands, became more slender s...

Synopsis

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. This book he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist writing in greater detail about his life. It is the only autobiography in which he discusses his life during and after the Civil War, including encounters with American Presidents Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.

In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he Wrote Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass. His other autobiographical works are My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.